CVE-2026-45623
Summary
PostCSS's PreviousMap parses the /*# sourceMappingURL=PATH */ comment from any CSS string passed to process() and dereferences PATH against the local filesystem with no scheme, allowlist, or traversal check. An attacker who controls the CSS input can cause the host process to read any file readable by Node and leak the first ~10 bytes of its content through the resulting JSON.parse SyntaxError message. The bug also yields a precise file-existence oracle and a controllable-read primitive that may be combined with large-file targets for DoS. The behaviour is triggered with PostCSS's default options — no from, no map, no plugins required — and is therefore reachable from any pipeline that runs untrusted CSS through PostCSS (CMS themes, user-uploaded styles, browser-extension/userstyle processors, build pipelines for third-party packages, blog comment renderers, etc.).
Details
The dangerous chain lives in lib/previous-map.js and is wired into every Input construction at lib/input.js:70-77.
Input constructor (lib/input.js:70-77):
if (pathAvailable && sourceMapAvailable) {
let map = new PreviousMap(this.css, opts)
if (map.text) {
this.map = map
let file = map.consumer().file
if (!this.file && file) this.file = this.mapResolve(file)
}
}
PreviousMap constructor (lib/previous-map.js:17-29):
constructor(css, opts) {
if (opts.map === false) return
this.loadAnnotation(css)
this.inline = this.startWith(this.annotation, 'data:')
let prev = opts.map ? opts.map.prev : undefined
let text = this.loadMap(opts.from, prev)
...
}
Note opts.map === false is the only short-circuit. With default options (opts.map === undefined), the rest of the constructor — including the filesystem read — executes.
loadAnnotation (lib/previous-map.js:72-84) extracts the URL without sanitisation:
loadAnnotation(css) {
let comments = css.match(/\/\*\s*# sourceMappingURL=/g)
if (!comments) return
let start = css.lastIndexOf(comments.pop())
let end = css.indexOf('*/', start)
if (start > -1 &
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Exploitation outlook
- Low exploitation risk0.50% 30-day exploitation probability — currently an unlikely target, but scores change as exploit code circulates. Riskier than 40% of all EPSS-scored CVEs.
Advisory coverage (2)
External references
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[](https://www.csirts.com/cve/CVE-2026-45623)